The Making of Mercury Theater – ORSON WELLES Those Who Worked With Welles Discuss His Brilliance (AUDIO)

Born George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American director, actor, writer, and producer.

He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.

Welles is responsible for the panic generated by his War of The Worlds radio program in 1938.

He also created Mercury Theater which was formed in August 1937 and dissolved 1946.

If you have any interest in classic entertainment… you’ll want to listen to this audio about the legendary director Orson Welles.

 

TRANSCRIPT of

The Making of Mercury Theater – ORSON WELLES

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You know, there’s been some talk here tonight about directors as though they were a separate breed.

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And I’m afraid I have to take exception to that.

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I believe that directors are, all of them, actors.

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Just as I believe that most writers are actors.

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There never was a community of people who got together and said,

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why don’t we have a theater? We need a theater. Where are the actors?

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That never happened in the history of the world.

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A few hams got together and said, let’s get up on the stage and do something.

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In the cave, somebody stood up and told a story.

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Nobody said, let’s have a story, until they’d heard a story.

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Orson Welles knew how to tell a story.

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I’m Leonard Maltin and this is a look at one of America’s master storytellers.

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Whether on the stage, on film or radio, Welles’ great skill was to manipulate the medium in a way that seized the imagination of his audience.

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The golden age of radio lasted some 20 years, but the radio broadcasts of Orson Welles rank among this century’s most unique artistic achievements.

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Richard Wilson, a member of the famed Mercury Company, recalls why radio was so special to Orson.

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Radio was a favorite medium of Orson’s because he knew it knew no boundaries.

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It was a theater of imagination. He thought of it as a gathering of people in the town square just to hear a story.

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Orson Welles began his network radio career at 19.

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By age 23, he had simultaneously become one of radio’s most accomplished performers and a top director on the Broadway stage.

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In a single year, the first in the life of the Mercury Theater, Orson Welles has come to be the most famous name of our time in American drama.

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Says Collier’s Magazine, 23-year-old Orson Welles threw a bombshell into Broadway.

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Robert Benchley writes in The New Yorker, the production of the Mercury is, I should say, just about perfect.

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Time Magazine declares, the brightest moon that has risen over Broadway in years.

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Welles should feel at home in the sky, for the sky is the only limit which his ambitions recognize.

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Veteran actress Peggy Weber listened to Welles on radio as a child and later acted with him in radio and film.

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She was Lady Macduff in Orson Welles’ 1948 film version of Macbeth.

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His imagination was so much more vital.

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He presented stories in a way that I realize today were moral and yet exciting and stimulating and beautiful.

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I knew that it was quality. There was nothing on the air like it. There never has been anything on the air like it.

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There’s never been anything as good as Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater.

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Welles’ reputation as a boy genius and his flamboyant style made him a formidable figure at this time.

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The young performer had so many radio and theater commitments, he needed a way to cut through the snarl of Manhattan traffic.

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After determining it was not illegal, the young Welles hired an ambulance to race him through New York’s crowded streets with sirens blaring so he could make his next show on time.

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Radio and television personality Arlene Francis was a young actress who worked with Welles in the 1930s in both radio and theater.

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He’d say, I think this would be better if we did it so and so and so and so and whoever was the director from NBC or CBS or wherever we did it would bow to his wishes because after all he was somebody and he had already accomplished a great deal.

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But he (Orson Welles) was very imaginative and his manner of forcefulness in what he had to say was powerful.

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I mean you just had to pay attention and I think it was one of the first times that radio had heard anybody with that kind of positive, able brilliance in his introduction to a play or into his understanding of the part that he was playing.

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He was always Orson, I will say that.

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Very few people argued with Orson about anything I noticed. I noticed mostly because I wouldn’t have dared but I mean mostly they just took his word for it although he was always open to suggestions and talks and so forth.

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And I remember one time when his first wife Virginia said I don’t happen to think that’s the right way to do that and he said but I do.

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And she had an ice cream soda in her hand in a container and she just threw it in front of the whole company.

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He just mopped it up and they went on working.

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Wells first radio series, First Person Singular, began on CBS in the summer of 1938.

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Its success led to the Mercury Theater on the Air and to the Campbell Playhouse series.

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In two short years Orson Wells had left his signature on radio forever.

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Cliff Thorsness created sound effects on Campbell’s Playhouse.

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He compares Wells to the conductor of a Philharmonic Orchestra, the leader who blended dialogue, music and sound effects into a seamless symphony.

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He was aware of the sound, the actor fading in and out, we’re fading in with the actor and out.

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We couldn’t stand there and look at our script and do a show.

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We had to be aware of what we were doing in the next scene because we were watching Orson.

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He could act a scene and direct sound.

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But he was physically, literally a director.

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He was standing on a podium and directing this.

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And that’s why the similarity between the conductor and Orson always struck me.

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A long time member of the Mercury Company was William Alland.

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He played the role of Thompson, the reporter in Wells’ classic film Citizen Kane.

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Alland says Wells took radio drama a step further than anyone before him.

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What he brought was first of all a complete ensemble style of performance, a completely integrated musical score.

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The musical bridges and transitions which are the equivalent of fades and dissolves in film.

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You know, are actually good.

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In addition to that element, a real fascination with sound.

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Sound in radio is like lights in theater. It really is, you see.

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And with sound you can do so much colorization. It’s more than just a background.

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So that sound became a very creative part of that.

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And then again you had finally an ensemble group that did not pander to the lowest common denominator of the audience, but the highest.

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We played classics. We did the best there is.

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There was no junk. It was all beautiful stuff.

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But done in a way with all these elements that he managed to hold the interest of kids, middle-aged, held the interest of everyone.

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Producer and actor John Hausman, who was Wells’ producing partner in the Mercury’s theatrical productions, also became a partner in radio.

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Well I wrote the first shows. I wrote the first seven or eight, no more than that, about ten shows.

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The first one or two I wrote with Orson because he taught me how to do radio shows.

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After that I was sort of general editor, but I still wrote most of them.

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Then when our Mercury season started, there was a time when I never got out of bed, because I never had time to get out of bed.

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So I would lie in bed and write the radio shows, lie in bed and administer the Mercury theatre, and in simple case I had no time to get up.

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The Orson Welles-Hausman relationship was extremely fruitful and extended from radio to the Broadway stage to the making of Citizen Kane.

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But there was often turbulence between the two men. Actress Geraldine Fitzgerald remembers.

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It was stormy, but they were tremendous friends and they were of immense value to each other, immense.

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Orson had very good taste, but he didn’t need to have any taste at all because he was so talented.

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He said he was like a busted water main, his talent, and it went all over the streets and down alleys and then it filled up holes and made shapes and patterns.

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That was Orson. And John comes along and then with buckets and jugs and pots and pans, he collects all this wonderful, wonderful material and allows it to have more shape than perhaps Orson would have bothered to give it.

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But he (Orson Welles) had too much talent to be careful of it.

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Noted Broadway producer Richard Barr, who began his long career as a member of the Mercury Company, also recalls the Wells-Hausman relationship.

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Orson was totally undisciplined artistically, somewhat personally too, but artistically certainly.

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And Jack was the steadying influence and I think Jack enjoyed that and he certainly, we all were extraordinarily fond of Jack as we were of Orson.

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But the fact is that he’s the one that kept it together.

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The best period of Orson was when he was with Jack Haussman.

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Richard Wilson.

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The reason for this, I think, is that it was predicated on the future.

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That they were both young. They were both still striving, still searching.

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John Haussman was essential to Orson Welles’s early career.

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And in my opinion, it was an artistic tragedy that they broke up the partnership because it was, in my opinion, always essential to his career.

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Because he needed someone to do a lot of the kind of work that he never wanted to do, never liked to do, and to deal with people that he found very difficult to deal with.

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And then if John had done a lot of the negotiating and so forth, then they could have a good laugh together and get on with the real thing,

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which was a place for the creativity of Orson, who was to flourish.

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Because that’s all that John was ever interested in, to make that.

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Because he understood that he was, you know, if not the major theatrical artist of the time, was certainly one of the greatest.

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There was nothing that he couldn’t have done.

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And what was so difficult for him was getting on with the people who put it all together.

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You see, in the theatre, you don’t really have to get on with everybody.

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If the worst comes to the worst, you can take your company and go out in the street and play your play there.

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Nobody can bother you.

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So that was really the position that he had at the Mercury Theatre.

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So they withdrew the money, so he put it on a bare stage.

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So they said that the cradle will rock, couldn’t speak from the stage, so they spoke from the audience.

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In other words, he remained always in command.

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But when he got to Hollywood, because the appurtenances of filmmaking are so incredibly expensive,

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I mean the camera, the sound, the lights, the lab, everything, the studio space, cost millions, as you know.

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Therefore, you have to get along with the people who are going to get those millions.

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You can’t take it out in the street.

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And that was the basic problem for him for the rest of his life.

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And if he could have held on to John, or John could have stood up to it all,

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then John could have done all that for him, as he had, as he did.

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But Orson Welles began to get so frustrated about Hollywood,

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and to rather kind of put too much on John, too much of his frustration.

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So I know he wants to do a table at him. John told me that he’d broken up with Orson,

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and they were not going to produce any more together.

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And I said, you shouldn’t do that. He is very valuable to us all, and you should put up with it.

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And John said, well, I didn’t mind him throwing a table at me.

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But when he sets fire to the tablecloth first, and then throws it, then I mind.

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So I said, well, I agree. I mean, that’s a lot.

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It’s a vexed problem, always, and not one that I have any intention of trying to solve.

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How much did our collaboration help Orson Welles to achieve those very early successes of his?

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And why didn’t they go on after the collaboration ended in a substantial way?

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And there’s no, I don’t know the answer to that.

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Another valuable Mercury contributor was Bernard Herman.

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Herman joined the CBS Music Department in 1934, and was quickly recognized as a budding musical talent.

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Four years later, Herman became composer and conductor of the CBS Orchestra on the Mercury broadcasts.

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It was an assignment that would thrust Bernard Herman to musical stardom.

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In an interview shortly before his death in 1975, Herman spoke of Wells.

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Orson is an improviser. Orson hasn’t one way to do anything.

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It’s an ensemble performance.

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Everybody who works with Orson Welles is part of everything.

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You’re with him at meals, on the holidays. Your life and his become one for the time you work together.

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Wells was almost a precocious child when you worked with him.

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It was an instantaneous intuitive understanding of what should be done.

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William Allen remembers the Wells-Herman relationship.

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The relationship was effective because Bernard Herman was not about to let Orson compose music for him.

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That’s all. Bernard Herman knew exactly what Orson needed, and he delivered what Orson needed.

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If Orson asked for something really outlandish, which he could do, Bernard would twirl his little head.

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Orson Welles would say, I don’t know how to do that. I just don’t know how to do that.

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Orson had great respect for him because he knew that Bernard could not be intimidated.

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What Benny did was to have a repertoire of music.

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It had wonderful names. For any gruesome effects, there was frozen music.

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That was always…

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As the rehearsal went on, he’d say, we’ll use ten bars of frozen music, and then we’ll use that theme and that theme.

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It was largely a matter of selection. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t compose special pieces.

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In general, these were pieces that he’d composed, but which were in the so-called repertory.

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I like to think that both of them, and I use the term genius, I think they both were.

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I think Bernard Herman was. They just seemed to have a relationship that they thought alike, they seemed to.

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The only thing I remember about Bernard Herman, he was very nervous.

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He had a short haircut, and he’d sit there talking to Orson Welles, and he’d twist his hair and pull.

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I know he didn’t pull a hair out every time he did this, but it was a nervous habit.

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He was hardly conscious of what he was doing, actually.

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It seemed like when they were together, they were just like one.

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When we’d finish our rehearsing in the big studio, Orson or somebody would call over to the Brown Derby and order half a dozen pork chops or whatever Orson was going to eat.

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And they’d come in and put the linen in the music studio with the orchestra.

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Then Orson would work as much with Bernard Herman and his music and the script as he did with the cast.

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Mercury rehearsals were notorious for their chaotic quality, usually a crisis-like atmosphere.

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But cast members also remember those times as great fun.

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In this rare rehearsal recording made in May 1940, we get a glimpse of Wells directing his ensemble cast for a production of Macbeth.

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Faye Bainter is Lady Macbeth.

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We have scotched the snake, not killed it.

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She’ll close and be herself whilst our poor malice remains in danger of her former tooth.

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But let the frame of things disjoint.

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Both the world suffer.

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Here we will eat our meal in fear and sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake us nightly.

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Better be with the dead whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.

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Restless, restless, god damn son of a bitch. Excuse me, I’m very sorry.

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Alright, once again, restless!

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You like the season of all nature. Sleep.

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Sleep. It will have blood, they say. Blood will have blood.

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Jesus Christ, I’m terribly sorry. But there’s coming to our ears the sound of wild offstage laughter.

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Let them away from the door.

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And it isn’t for me at least to go away from the door, man.

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That’s the way the president is.

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You can throw the whole rack of lead into the cave.

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Thank you.

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What did you do now?

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I am a man that could use a loan of 25 cents because I don’t know how I’m going to eat breakfast tomorrow, as you know.

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This is a line from Luella. He knows all. He’s all about Hollywood.

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A line or two, it commences.

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Orson Welles got himself a husky bankroll in San Francisco.

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And now he’s talking with Lawrence Olivia about going into partnership to produce stage plays.

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Yee-hee! Oh, God, that’s funny.

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You get that idea.

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Where does she make these big stuff?

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She doesn’t make them. I’m getting to that part.

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Close the door. Let’s go. Come on, man. We’re trying to work. Don’t look at me in that way as though I weren’t going ahead.

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Then on Sunday, hell broke loose. We started at eight in the morning and rehearsed like mad all day.

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Then, as I remember it, we’d have a sort of run-through rehearsal.

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Orson directing it naturally and acting in it and giving the cues.

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And that would happen probably around noon or one o’clock.

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Finally, we’d have a dress rehearsal.

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And then the great discoveries would be made as to how long or short we were.

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This was not as much of a problem as one would think because Orson had an unbelievable capacity for stretching or hurrying shows.

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He was such a past master of radio that he could add or subtract 15 minutes from an hour show without major difficulty.

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Once in a while, we did have major difficulty. Were you around when Man Who Was Thursday?

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Well, Man Who Was Thursday was Orson’s favorite novel.

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And so he said, we’re going to do Man Who Was Thursday.

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And he said, I don’t want any of you, you housewomen, I don’t want your coarse hands touching this work.

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I shall write this work myself. Wonderful, Orson. Great.

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So about a week went by and Orson, have you got a script? Can we have a script?

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No, I’m working on it. Don’t bother me. Don’t hurry me. This is my thing I’m really fond of. This is my show that I love.

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Well, we arrived on the Saturday and there was no show, not a word. He’d not written a word.

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He’d marked a few scenes in pencil.

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So now we were in desperate and we sat down and we sort of, with a paste pot and scissors,

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and Orson choosing his favorite scenes, he knew the play, the book very, very well. He really loved it.

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So we sort of started putting a show together. But even that was slow work,

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because Orson hated to lose anything or whether to add anything.

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And anyhow, we went into the rehearsal and the whole thing was we never had a script.

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It was all sort of patches, pieces of papers stuck together.

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And we went into the dress rehearsal and we discovered that we were 22 minutes short. 22 minutes.

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Well, that was more than even Orson could handle. And so we had a wonderful idea.

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I don’t know if it was Orson’s idea or mine, but what happened is I, while they were sort of doing their rehearsal,

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I ran down to the library at CBS and I collected it. It was the end of the season.

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We were getting ready to announce our new season. So I rushed down to the library, got all these books.

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They were books I knew that Orson and I both liked and admired, so I wasn’t too worried about that.

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So I brought up this pile of books and then we just sat there and we were on the air by this time.

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And I would hand Orson one of these books, The Mark, and Orson would read it brilliantly

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and say, that is the kind of entertainment we’re going to give you next season. Next!

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And then I’d hand him another book and he’d read another passage. And so we filled 22 minutes.

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And it was a wonderful show and the network was enchanted.

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They said, that is a really wonderful trailer. That’s the kind of thing we should have more of.

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Wells also had a flair for the practical joke, which he often used to terrify network executives

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or even members of his own Mercury company. Geraldine Fitzgerald and Richard Wilson recall two such memorable incidents.

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He had a habit when he was broadcasting on radio of having a spare script

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not attached to any book and not attached to any kind of clips.

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So in other words, just the papers were loose. And as a matter of fact, I think we all did that

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so that we could turn the pages more easily. But just before the countdown,

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he would suddenly pretend to be unusually elated or unusually incensed

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and he would fling all the script up into the air, all further to the ground.

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So that when the executive officers could go into the booth now,

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this is the first time they’ve seen what was going to happen,

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they thought he’s going to have to go on without a script.

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But he hadn’t really had another one. He just wanted to give them a fright.

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It was 1940. I’ve always had a very short fuse. And I’d been arrested in Burbank

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because the police department, well, I’d refused to give them my driver’s license number.

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And I spent several hours in jail. They gave me that one traditional phone call

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and I called Orson and I asked for bail and he came through.

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Well, at our next rehearsal of the Campbell Playhouse, this was in Hollywood,

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Orson was conducting rehearsals and suddenly the doors burst open

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and a bunch of uniformed policemen entered the studio and one of them said,

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you have a Richard Wilson here? We have a warrant for his arrest.

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Well, by this time I’m hiding behind some chairs and stuff in the back corner of the studio.

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Then Orson broke up. Everybody broke up.

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You see, Orson had hired some extras, rented some police uniforms for them

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and he’d ordered them to come to the studio and scare the hell out of me.

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Everybody was in on the joke, but me.

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Of course, Orson took great, great delight in this and had gotten back from my calling him for bail.

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Realistic sound effects were an important element of radio drama.

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Wells took a very personal interest in the quality and accuracy of the sound effects used in the Mercury broadcast.

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Remember, we spent at least three hours of valuable time

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experimenting on what would sound most like a severed head for Tale of Two Cities.

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And I think the final decision was a cabbage.

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They would put a cleaver through a cabbage and then drop it into the basket.

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During the Campbell Playhouse broadcast, we were broadcasting from a place called Liederkranz Hall

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and it was an ancient turn of the century building with lots of toilets and urinals and so forth.

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And Orson, for the program Les Miserables, put a microphone in there to represent the sewers of Paris

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because all the johns and urinals leaked, dripped and so forth.

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Somebody made his way through and on the program, on a coast-to-coast broadcast,

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we heard this toilet flushing and the man had done his whole thing and that went out over the national broadcast.

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Orson Welles, as usual, had all his headphones on to monitor all the sound.

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And he heard this and the look on his face was extraordinary, it was incredible.

26:41.000 –> 26:48.000

Of course, the most famous of the Mercury broadcasts was H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds on Halloween Eve, 1938.

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It was the program that scared the nation and propelled the young Orson Wells onto the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

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We now return you to Carl Phillips at Grover’s Mill.

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Ladies and gentlemen, here I am, back of a stone wall that adjoins Mr. Wilma’s garden.

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From here I get a sweep of the whole scene. I’ll give you every detail as long as I can talk and as long as I can see.

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More state police have arrived. They’re drawing up a cordon in front of the pit. About 30 of them.

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No need to push the crowd back now. They’re willing to keep their distance.

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The captain’s conferring with someone. I can’t quite see who.

27:28.000 –> 27:38.000

I believe it’s Professor Pearson. Yes it is. Now they’ve parted and the professor moves around one side, studying the object while the captain and two policemen advance with something in their hands.

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I can see it now. It’s a white hexagon tied to a pole.

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A flag of truce. Those preachers know what that means, what anything means.

27:49.000 –> 27:50.000

Wait a minute, something’s happening.

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The show itself was one of those miracles. It just happens to be a very, very good script.

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And everybody pitched in. The actors, the famous story of the man who was playing the reporter who went downstairs and played the Hindenburg record over and over and over and then virtually reproduced it in a different context.

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It strikes them head on. They’re turning into flames.

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The whole field’s fallen apart. The woods are flying. The gas tanks, the automobiles are spreading everywhere.

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The man who was to read the Secretary of the Interior, he really pulled a very fast one on this because he could imitate Roosevelt’s voice perfectly.

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And I don’t know to what degree Orson or I or anybody was aware that he was going to use that voice, but he did. And of course it was one of the most damning and effective things in the show.

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Citizens of the nation, I shall not try to conceal the gravity of the situation that confronts the country, nor the concern of your government in protecting the lives and property of its people.

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However, I wish to impress upon you, private citizens and public officials, all of you, the urgent need of calm and resourceful action.

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But the whole atmosphere in that studio was absolutely electric. Everybody suddenly realized there was a chance to do a wonderful show and the very similitude of it, of course, was very important.

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And that was our main preoccupation. And then Orson himself made an enormous contribution because the beginning of that show, you’ve heard it many times, I’m sure, is very boring.

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It’s supposed to be. That was the whole trick. But Orson emphasized that and Orson carried that a step much further than we would have had the nerve to do, anybody, Stuart or anybody else.

29:50.000 –> 29:59.000

So in the beginning you have these terribly slow scenes and these long pauses and then these Chopin piano solos.

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And the fact is that by about 13 minutes into the show, something had to happen because the show was so boring that it was not possible that a show would be.

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And then very slowly it started to accelerate, which explains why people believed it, because the fact is that if you accelerate as cleverly as that, as well as that, people don’t notice that suddenly you’re covering the incidents that would take a day.

30:28.000 –> 30:45.000

You’re covering it in five minutes. And that’s one of the magic things about radio, that you can create that illusion and that suspension of disbelief. And Orson was largely contributing to that.

30:46.000 –> 30:54.000

As War of the Worlds aired, Arlene Francis was in rehearsals for Wells’ stage production of Danton’s Death. She remembers Wells arriving at the theater after the broadcast.

30:54.000 –> 31:06.000

And so we used to rehearse at the theater until, you know, midnight or later. And Orson came from that broadcast and he burst into the…we were all waiting for him.

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And he burst into the auditorium and said, I don’t know what’s going to happen. The police are going to be after me.

31:16.000 –> 31:24.000

I know all hell has broken loose now because of the fact that I had this War of the Worlds done so well that they really thought it was going on.

31:25.000 –> 31:32.000

And he came and he couldn’t believe the reaction to it. None of us could, you know. But we all stayed there a long time and he was talking about it.

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And he was…he said, it’s nothing. They made such a big thing out of nothing. How could they do that? How are people so silly as to believe a thing like that?

31:40.000 –> 31:45.000

And in the first place, they hear my voice, they don’t think I’m going to be the one to announce a war between the worlds.

31:46.000 –> 31:53.000

We were opposite Charlie McCarthy. Not the senator, but the wooden doll. That was the other network.

31:54.000 –> 32:01.000

And Roosevelt sent a telegram the next day saying this only goes to prove that all intelligent people are listening to Charlie McCarthy.

32:01.000 –> 32:20.000

I was in the control room and sitting next to the CBS, our supervisor, who’s David St. Taylor, quite a well-known figure later, ran Columbia performing arts.

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And he got a call and suddenly got up and left rather precipitately. And then he came back about three minutes later, white as a sheet, said, we’ve got to stop the show.

32:34.000 –> 32:44.000

We’ve got to stop. We ran over our first half. Instead of breaking at 30…no, 27, 28 minutes, we ran about 35.

32:44.000 –> 32:49.000

And I remember that Dave said, John, you’ve got to stop the show. You’ve got to stop it.

32:50.000 –> 32:57.000

And I interposed my body between him and Orson and said, no, no, never, never, you can’t ruin the show.

32:58.000 –> 33:07.000

So he wasn’t a terribly strong character and he was not a brutal character. So he sort of stood there helplessly and for about another five minutes we went on until we finished the show.

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Then as soon as we finished the show, I or David or somebody went up to Orson and said, look, you’ve got to make an explanation because this hell is broken loose.

33:17.000 –> 33:22.000

And I can’t tell you what, but just make an explanation. So he made his set speech, which was all about Halloween.

33:22.000 –> 33:38.000

That was our little Halloween joke and so on. But by then I had calls in the control room from governors of states and not to me, but to the show, saying, what is this?

33:39.000 –> 33:46.000

If this is a joke, we’re coming down and we’re going to punch you in the nose. I mean, this was some governor of Iowa or somewhere.

33:46.000 –> 33:55.000

And then the second half of the show went on. Well, by then the second half of the show is totally uncontroversial.

33:56.000 –> 34:03.000

It’s pure HG Wells and it’s the two last survivors on the earth after the by accident they’ve survived.

34:04.000 –> 34:08.000

But by then, of course, everybody was rushing around. Nobody was listening.

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And then when it was over, CBS sent dozens of house police into the studio.

34:19.000 –> 34:27.000

They snatched all the scripts and they hustled Orson and me into the into some room, some back room.

34:28.000 –> 34:35.000

And they kept us there for about half an hour. Then the press was released to us and they behaved dreadfully.

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But the press was very sore at radio. Radio had displaced them as the prime news medium and they were very sore.

34:44.000 –> 34:53.000

So they made the most of it. They would do things like, well, you’ve heard about the family of five that was killed on the New Jersey Highway.

34:53.000 –> 35:04.000

If you had any more around the country and they would all pull things like that so that we believed for the next two or three hours that we were mass murderers.

35:05.000 –> 35:11.000

As the days wore on, the perception of the war of the world’s broadcast was transformed from a disaster to an artistic triumph.

35:12.000 –> 35:16.000

Within weeks, the Campbell Soup Company became Orson Welles’s radio sponsor.

35:16.000 –> 35:26.000

I guess they figured if Orson could make the war of the world’s credible and the Martians credible, he could make Campbell’s Chicken Soup credible.

35:27.000 –> 35:29.000

So we became the Campbell Playhouse.

35:30.000 –> 35:38.000

Of all the reasons for Orson Well’s extraordinary success with radio, William Allen feels a key factor was in Well’s own insecurities about his acting ability.

35:38.000 –> 35:48.000

I think that when it came to Orson’s acting, his first instinctive performance was always better than his tenth rehearsed one.

35:49.000 –> 35:55.000

You see, because after the first we began, we would start listening to himself and doubting himself.

35:56.000 –> 36:05.000

He never really had, in my view, real confidence in himself as an actor. He never really felt that he was really a good actor.

36:05.000 –> 36:15.000

Which is why he felt the most comfortable and the most secure when he was patted with noses and putty and bellies so that the real Orson could be hidden deep in there.

36:16.000 –> 36:26.000

His problem was as an actor, he never learned to or never could do that tremendously difficult juggling act that a great actor can do.

36:26.000 –> 36:36.000

Which is to have absolute control over a performance and know what you’re doing and at the same time feel, have the passion of it too, you see.

36:37.000 –> 36:46.000

And Orson had found it very difficult to be somebody other than Orson yet at the same time have control of that character.

36:47.000 –> 36:54.000

Radio was the only medium that imposed a discipline that Orson Welles would recognize.

36:54.000 –> 37:04.000

And that was the clock. When it came time for the Mercury to go on the air, there was no denying it.

37:05.000 –> 37:11.000

I can’t think of one theater production, one theater production ever that was not postponed.

37:12.000 –> 37:21.000

But radio, he knew every week that clock was ticking, that red light would come on and say, on the air.

37:21.000 –> 37:31.000

That good or bad, right or wrong, boy that was it. It was the only discipline Orson was able ever to accept.

37:32.000 –> 37:39.000

Radio’s golden age was a mere blip in time. It lasted some 20 years, pushed aside by television.

37:40.000 –> 37:45.000

But from this mass medium came something unique, a form of theater that stimulated the individual imagination.

37:45.000 –> 37:54.000

That caused the audience to contribute to the storytelling process. Actress Peggy Weber remembers the time when radio was a dominant force in American life.

37:55.000 –> 38:01.000

Well radio was our main source of entertainment. It was our main contact with the rest of the world.

38:02.000 –> 38:06.000

It was immediate. It was happening right at the time we were hearing it live.

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It was exciting as it is today to see a stage production.

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And television I feel has robbed us of that opportunity to contribute as an audience.

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Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, Orson Welles never really came to terms with television.

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When radio drama faded from the American scene, it closed a glorious chapter in Welles’ career.

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Thanks for listening and until next time, I remain as always obediently yours.

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This laser disc was produced by Frank Beauchamp and Richard Wilson.

39:14.000 –> 39:18.000

The documentary Theater of the Imagination was produced by Frank Beauchamp.

39:19.000 –> 39:21.000

Audio post-production by Digital Magnetics of Hollywood.

39:22.000 –> 39:26.000

Original acetate recordings were mastered on digital audio tape by Glenn Simonelli.

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Those recordings are part of the Orson Welles collection at the Lilly Library, Indiana University.

39:31.000 –> 39:34.000

This is Leonard Maltin speaking.

 

THE END

 

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